How to Set Up ADB and Fastboot with Android SDK on Windows PC

This tutorial explains how to set up and install ADB and Fastboot using Android SDK / Android Studio on your computer. Android SDK is now a component of the whole Android Studio setup. Android SDK brings with itself the two most important tools needed for tweaking your Android phone, ADB and Fastboot. Why do we need them? ADB (Android Debug Bridge) and Fastboot / Bootloader helps us install a custom recovery which allows us to root our Android devices, install custom ROMs, debug apps, collect system data and perform many other system tweaks which are not otherwise possible. You can also flash bootloader updates or flash system images of various Android updates. Similarly, ADB allows you to access your phone directly from the computer while connected with a USB cable using command line tools.

We do so many tutorials daily on Team Android on how to root Android phones, install custom firmware etc. and we always recommend you should have your USB drivers properly installed and your Android phone should be working perfectly fine with ADB and Fastboot. Android SDK is now a part of Android Studio, Google’s new IDE for Android development. To work with the SDK or its tools, you need to have Android Studio installed on your computer.

Related Articles:

We also have some other related guides you might want to check out for setting up ADB and Fastboot i.e. installation on macOS, setting up Wear OS etc.

ADB and Fastboot for Mac: Are you a MacOS / OS X user looking for a installation method of ADB or Fastboot? Please read our complete guide:

Download ADB and Fastboot: You can now download ADB and Fastboot separately with updated binaries and code that support the latest Android 7.0 Nougat, Android O and other future releases. Get it from the following link:

This following tutorial lists down the steps you need for Android Studio installation and then making sure ADB and Fastboot work on your computer as expected. Let’s get on with the tutorial on how to set up ADB and Fastboot for your Android phone so that you never have to go through USB drivers issues again when trying out a custom firmware.

How to Set Up ADB, Fastboot, Google USB Drivers with Android Studio / SDK Manager

Here are the step-by-step instructions to install and set up Android Studio, SDK Manager, ADB, Fastboot drivers and Google USB drivers. Everything has been explained in detail below. Please make sure you follow the steps carefully and read this tutorial once before actually performing it.

Required:

An Android phone. We will be using a Nexus 6P (also works with all Nexus, Google Pixel and other OEM devices)

MicroUSB / USB-C cable – depending on what your phone supports

A computer with 6-7 GB of disk space

Jump to Pages:

If you already have downloaded and installed Android Studio and Android SDK, you can jump to the following pages to set up ADB or Fastboot. Or just follow all the steps as given below.

1. Downloading Java, Android Studio and Android USB Drivers

First, we need to get Java Platform installed and then download Android Studio so we can install all the required Android USB drivers (and some other tools) using SDK Manager. This is how it is to be done:

Step 2 –Download Android Studio (android-studio-bundle-XX.XXXXXX-windows.exe) from the Android Developers website to your computer. This may take a while to download as the entire set up is about 2GB in size.

NOTE: Android Studio 2.3.3 is the latest version at the time of writing this tutorial. Future releases install in the same way as shown below.

Step 3 – Run the EXE setup file you just downloaded. You may be prompted to grant permission to run the file depending on your Windows UAC settings. You should be greeted with a similar setup wizard screen as shown below. Click Next to begin!

Step 5 – We are sure you would not want to read through the entire license agreement. Click I Agree.

Step 6 – This is where you select the installation location for Android Studio and Android SDK. You may select another location / drive that has the required space available. Click Next to continue.

Step 7 – Yes, you would want to have to a Start menu folder. Just click Install to continue.

Step 8 – Installation should begin now. This may take a while for all the files to be extracted and installed to your computer.

Step 9 – Once the installation is completed, click Next.

Step 10 – You are now all set to launch Android Studio for the first time. Click Finish to proceed.

In the older setups of Eclipse and SDK Manager, you had to manually install the the Android SDK Platform-Tools (that includes ADB, Fastboot) and the Google Android USB driver. Now, everything comes bundled with Android Studio as the whole Android SDK component that we chose to install in Step 4.

If you uncheck Android SDK in Step 4, the setup wizard will ask you to enter the path to an existing installation of Android SDK. If you do not have that, the installation process will not proceed ahead. So eventually, whenever you install Android Studio, the whole SDK and its tools are automatically downloaded/installed on your computer.